Every Taylor Swift Lead Single Ranked, From ‘Tim McGraw’ to ‘The Fate of Ophelia’: Critic’s Picks

At press time, Taylor Swift is ruling the Billboard Hot 100 with her 13th No. 1 hit — and it’s all thanks to “The Fate of Ophelia,” the lead single from new album The Life of a Showgirl.

Though the sparkling, smitten love song wasn’t released at any point before the LP dropped, “Ophelia” definitely got the lead single treatment, with the pop star pairing it with a big-budget music video and a TikTok trend-bait dance campaign. It follows the strategy of Swift’s past singles throughout the back half of her catalog, for which she’s been opting to release an album’s tracks all at once while still pushing one as the lead — such as “Fortnight” on The Tortured Poets Department and “Anti-Hero” on Midnights, both of which topped the charts and earned Grammy nods in the major song categories.

Before 2020’s Folklore, however, the singer followed the more traditional format of dropping lead singles well in advance of their respective albums, allowing those tracks to formally usher in a brand new era by making a grand artistic statement. Almost every Swiftie, for instance, remembers exactly where they were the first time they heard Swift say, “Sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now” on “Look What You Made Me Do,” which set the stage for Reputation to drop six weeks later.

But no matter which approach the musician has used for her lead singles, each one has notched a memorable and important place in Swift history. From her debut single to “Ophelia,” check out Billboard‘s ranking of all 12 lead album tracks the star has dropped — as well as their chart peaks on the Hot 100 — over the course of her career below.